If you read this blog regularly, you will know that we have used two unbelieving websites as examples for some of the points we need to make. We have stopped linking to them and mentioning their names because they are a bit off the rails and cannot correctly engage any dissension to their point of view.
We appreciate the free advertising they provide us but we are not willing to return the favor. Instead of using credible arguments filled with verifiable evidence, they attack and accuse. Instead of thinking that their treasured sources are wrong and in error, they claim that God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, sinless beings, are the ones lying or making mistakes.
They love to twist and distort what has been said in those views they disagree with. One example is the following:
Leaving aside how the fundie ignores the very quote he posted, at what point do we stop dismissing refugees and start helping them? If someone flees a warzone, and arrives at the shores of another nation, cold, desperate and alone, is it the Christian thing to force them to return from where they came, or help them? If they are running from a barbaric regime, they would not have had time to go through the rigmarole of immigration procedures, does that mean we fail to show them compassion and kindness? The fundie really seems to hate those concepts.
This is all twisted from reality and ignores what the laws on immigration say. The quote that person is referring to is this Bible verse:
When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.(Lev. 19:33-34)
What the unbeliever twists is that he uses these verses as a proof text stating that even illegal aliens should be treated properly instead of the criminals that they are. Also, he ignores the other verses in the Bible that tell believers to obey the laws and not sin.
He takes one verse and decides it overrules all the rest of the Bible in this situation. We can’t fault him for thinking like that as there are many ‘Christian individuals and organizations’ that do the same thing in this very situation.
As we have explained before, immigration laws do not cause a Christian to sin. They must be obeyed whether the unbeliever agrees or not. The distortion comes in with the rest of the examples. The immigration laws do have exceptions to them and cover those distorted points that unbeliever is moaning about.
Do we care about those people who run and do not defend their homeland? Of course, we do, but that does not mean they get to break the law to enter any country and deplete it of resources or cause harm to the legal citizens of those countries.
Christians have to care about legal citizens as well. We cannot rob one of the needed resources to help someone else who should not be in the country and has broken the law. This is why missions were created by Jesus in the Great Commission.
Jesus said GO YE not let them come illegally to you. Christians are to go to other countries and help the legal citizens there. We do not break the law to help others unless those laws cause someone to break God’s rules. Immigration laws do not do that.
Another example of twisting and distorting that unbelievers do is found in this example:
Whenever a far-right fundie campaigns to remove LGBT rights, or remove women’s rights,
First off, the LGBTQ and women had rights. They had the right to marry someone of the opposite sex, use the bathroom of their birth gender and anatomy, plus they had the right to work and so on. BUT these people are not asking for rights, because they refused the rights they already had.
They want special rights for behavior that has historically and biblically wrong. Perversion is not normal or right and making it thus is wrong and harms society as a whole. But you can read our articles on homosexuality, etc. to get more details on this issue.
One last example of twisting and distortion
In previous posts, I informed the fundie that marriage predates Christianity, and that marriage is not a religious institution. In ancient Rome, Greece, China, and Mesopotamia, same-sex unions were not uncommon. So, historically, the fundie’s claim is bunk. It was the rise of Christianity (and other Abrahamic religions) that led to stigmas and even persecution of the LGBT community, and the idea that same-sex marriage was evil. In many ways, removing the interference of religion from what was previously a civil institution is restoring balance and justice.
He starts off by saying ‘biblically does not matter’ So when you trash and dismiss the beliefs of those you are discussing with, you have shot yourself in the foot. trashing and dismissing other millions of people’s beliefs doesn’t make your point of view correct.
It just shows that you have a closed mind and are unwilling to be rational and only want to discuss your own point of view as if it were infallible and inerrant. Their closed, narrow-minded thinking is worse than they accuse the Christian of having.
When people like that unbeliever says things like that the Christian knows it is a waste of time responding to them. Because they won’t accept the truth and have rejected reality. That unbeliever makes the comment that ‘marriage pre-dates Christianity’.
But marriage does not pre-date God or the Bible.
24 For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. (Gen. 2)
Marriage was there right from the start with Adam and Eve. It has always been an institution for a union between 1 man and 1 woman. Historical disobedience to this fact is not proof or permission to do it or allow it to take place today.
The distortion and twist come in when the unbeliever makes that type of statement that marriage pre-dates Christianity. Marriage is from the same God who started not only this world, but Judaism, Christianity, and pre- Abraham times.
It is not the religion that places the restrictions on marriage BUT God who created humans who has. All his example proves is that historically, there were people who wanted special rights to practice what is wrong and sin.
The so-called ‘stigma’ that unbeliever speaks about is not from Christians. It is self-inflicted because men and women go after perversions and refuse to live life the correct way. They bring it on themselves for wanting and pursuing abnormal behavior.
They have the right to reject those perversions and repent of their sins, but they love their sins more than they love God. So they continue to sin against their neighbors by being bullies, demanding entrance to institutions or services they are not entitled to.
Does the fundie suffer because two men or two women get married? Does he suffer when an 11 year-old girl receives an abortion to save her life? Does he suffer because someone else extends the hand of kindness to a frightened, lonely refugee? Does anyone actually suffer for any of these things?
This is more twisting of reality to make a strawman argument. We all suffer when people decide to break God’s laws. If you look at the example of Ai, you would see that one man sinned in Jericho and the rest of the Israelites suffered for it.
We all suffer because people we too selfish, greedy, and self-absorbed to humbly obey God and his rules. But unbelievers are blind and deceived and do not see what their actions bring upon everyone else.
They think they are wise in their own eye, when they are nothing but foolish people. Their doubt comes in when they say:
Unbelievers, by definition, do not care about the threat of punishment from a deity they do not believe in,
They are like ostriches who stick their heads in the sand and ignore what is really happening around them. Or they are like the late Phillip Davies, who in one interview when presented with physical evidence that the biblical accounts of Isreal were true pre-Omri. They close their eyes and chant, it did not happen.
Just because they do not believe doe snot mean that GHod, Jesus, and the HS do not exist and that judgment is not coming. The Bible speaks of these people and they are as peter describes in his second epistle:
3 Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, 4 and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers [a]fell asleep, all things continue just as they were from the beginning of creation.” 5 For [b]when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, (2 Peter 3)
As a side point, we need to point something out about marriage. There is no mechanism in that false theory that would lead to the rise of marriage. Evolution has no morality rules or concept of right and wrong or good and evil.
Marriage had to come from somewhere and it wasn’t the secular world because the secular world prefers sinful sexual relationships for the most part. That means it came from God who is moral and knows right from wrong, good from evil.
Every complaint we hear from unbelievers boils down to selfish arrogant pride. They want to do things their way instead of humbling themselves and obeying God. Some do but not enough of them. They can be very moral when it comes to some of God’s rules but selfish, arrogant, and prideful when it comes to other rules from God.
While we may still use those websites to address key points, we are looking to not respond to them again after they ‘rebut’ what we say. The owner of the BG website did it again last night and was entirely wrong in all of his points. But that is the way it is with some unbelievers.
They will lie and accuse Christians of doing things they did not. Pakistan in recent years is evidence for this, not just the BG website. While we are sad that owner quit on Jesus and walked away, all he is is a quitter and has nothing but false accusations and lies to offer anyone who will read his boring life story.
The other owner of the website we use for examples is too cowardly to explore honestly anything about God. We bet if he truly and honestly asked God to reveal himself to him, he would be surprised by the res[ponse he would get.
We know God is real, that Jesus is his son, and that the HS is real and leads believers to the truth. We think that the owner of the BG website knows it as well but he exercised his right of free choice for the wrong path and now Jesus is hidden from him.
But it may not be too late for the owner of Meerkat Musing. Time will only tell and if he can stop twisting and distorting long enough, he may see and realize the truth